Well well well well well, paint me red and call me a girly scout. I've been saying for months now that there's much more collaboration between Apple and Microsoft than their respective fanboys want to believe, especially when it comes to fighting Google and Android, which both companies partly do via patent suits. More evidence for this has emerged today. Remember CPTN Holdings, the consortium led by Microsoft which bought that bundle of patents from Novell? Which other companies are part of this consortium? EMC. Oracle. Apple.

Here are the facts:
1. The poster kristoph who was voted down claimed this:

You misunderstand what OIN is (maybe Groklaw does as well, I can't say as I've not read their stuff).

OIN owns patents donated to it by it's members. It does not own or license all patents held by it's members. It's fair to say none of those Novell patents that were purchased are owned by OIN (otherwise they would not be Novell's to sell).

Well, that last paragraph was correct, but it very much missed the point.

You see, I didn't misunderstand at all ... the poster kristoph who was voted down was the one who actually misunderstood.

The patents related to Linux held by OIN's members and licensees are all licensed royalty free to each other, in perpetuity.

Groklaw was correct.

The OP (kristoph) misunderstood the extent to which the OIN is what its own title claims it to be ... the OIN is indeed an Open Invention Network. All OIN members and licensees end up having a royalty-free license to use all Linux-related patents of the whole group.

That is a lot of patents they all have a license to.

Anyway, the point stands. Google is an OIN licensee. Google is listed amongst the "community of OIN licensees".

That in turn means means that Google already has a license, in perpetuity, to use any Linux-related patent that may be within the set of 882 Novell patents sold to CPTN Holdings.

OIN doesn't own those 882 patents, nor does Google (Novell used to own them) ... but nevertheless all OIN members and licensees have a license (IOW they have permission) to use those patents. In perpetuity. This will remain so even after Novell sells the patents to CPTN Holdings.

In turn, I'm afraid that fact makes nonsense of the speculation in the original article, which said:

And now, we have the news that CPTN Holdings, which recently acquired a boatload of patents from Novell, is actually a consortium consisting of EMC, Oracle, Apple, and Microsoft. All this is yet more proof that when it comes to intellectual property - the chosen weapon in the fight against Android - Oracle, Apple, and Microsoft are big buddies.

It'll be interesting to see if Google will be able to withstand all this.

Of course Google will be able to withstand this: Google already holds a license for those patents (if any are related to Linux). If there are patents amongst the 882 which are not related to Linux, then they cannot be used to attack Google over Android.

What is surprising to me is that I already sent Thom an article linking to this finding posted on Groklaw. Thom must be more than a bit embarrased if he has just now realised what it meant.

I'm sorry to say it Thom, but all this makes you look very much like a red-painted girly scout.